Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, 1888

Claude Debussy and the Prism of Life

Until the seventeenth century, light was accepted as a force of illumination, colorless and devoid of structure, the essential device by which God brought life from a formless void. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the […]... Read More

Just Being There

With the continuing dismal news proliferating daily that would unsettle the most secure supporter of the President of the United States, President Obama continues to see his role as the one time assumed leader of the “free” world as that of a disinterested bystander.  The log of upsetting events propels unabated … Fragile and timid […]... Read More
President Obama  II

A Sorry State of Affairs

What a week it has been. In the past week, the IRS, the agency dedicated to holding accountable hundreds of millions of Americans to maintain precise records to defend their economic interactions and responsibility to proffer taxable income, admitted that somehow more then two years of emails sent by Lois Lerner beginning in the critical pre-election […]... Read More
D Day Omaha Beach 1944 D Day Normandy June 6th 1944

A Close Run Thing

In his later years, the 1st Duke of Wellington, Field Marshall Arthur Wellesley, celebrated as the pre-eminent hero of final defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo and subsequently twice the Prime Minister of Great Britain, would have been forgiven a glossy remembrance of his greatest victory. Asked, however, of his impression of the moment at Waterloo that […]... Read More
Obama-Benghazi

Doctrines and Legacies

Presidents of the United States from its inception have felt a pull to leave some form of recognizable imprint on the destiny of the country that would suggest a contribution worthy of the nation’s Olympian founders.  Since the end of World War II, this has been elevated by the nation’s position as the undisputed economic […]... Read More
UKIP Rise of Nationalist Parties Europe - BBC Herman Von Rompuy Nigel Farage UKIP

The Rise of the Nationalists

On November 30th 2010, Ramparts of Civilization focused on an obscure, in your face politician representing Great Britain at the assembly of the European Union named Nigel Farage as People We Should Know #5, for his aggressive framing of the concepts liberty and national sovereignty in the temple of supra-national rule. I don’t want to say I […]... Read More
Mike Lester - washingtonpostwriters group

The Elephant in the Room

  Two weeks ago,  an e-mail obtained by the watchdog organization Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act  identified the involvement of the White House in the framing of the initial explanation denying the Benghazi terrorist attack of September 11th 2012 as a terrorist attack after a year of denial that there was any initial knowledge of […]... Read More